Jeff Vrabel: Not now -- I’m busy communicating

Wednesday

Oct 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2007 at 3:57 PM

I currently have three e-mail accounts up and running. All of them have the slightly unnerving, droid-like ability to check and update themselves, which is good, because that removes from my day the highly taxing task of clicking "CHECK MAIL" myself every couple of minutes. That may sound like a ridiculous luxury, but the thing is, without the auto-checker, I would absolutely be clicking "CHECK MAIL" every couple of minutes, because I have no attention span to do anything else. I find myself clicking "CHECK MAIL" every three minutes because I've spent 10 years clicking "CHECK MAIL" every three minutes. It's like the circle of life, except with a lot more attention-deficit problems and eye-twitching, and it's literally all I know how to do anymore.

Jeff Vrabel

Now this is just ridiculous.
I currently have three e-mail accounts up and running. All of them have the slightly unnerving, droid-like ability to check and update themselves, which is good, because that removes from my day the highly taxing task of clicking "CHECK MAIL" myself every couple of minutes. That may sound like a ridiculous luxury, but the thing is, without the auto-checker, I would absolutely be clicking "CHECK MAIL" every couple of minutes, because I have no attention span to do anything else. I find myself clicking "CHECK MAIL" every three minutes because I've spent 10 years clicking "CHECK MAIL" every three minutes. It's like the circle of life, except with a lot more attention-deficit problems and eye-twitching, and it's literally all I know how to do anymore.
Anyway, while my considerable e-mail presence lurks in the background, I am also rocking two instant-messenger programs, each one filled with its own avatars and cute names and feverishly, zanily, Japanese robot-cartoon-busy ads. These messenger programs are useful for exchanging witty banter with friends and family, or, more importantly, sending to them with great expediency videos of cheerleaders getting knocked down by whole football teams. (My cousin, after discovering we exist apparently on the same instant messenger something-or-another, let out a virtual sigh of relief. "Finally," she wrote with the delightful irony that makes our family's Thanksgivings a real blast and a half, "We have a way to communicate on the computer now.")
I also have open one I do not use, as though I'm saving it for emergencies, presumably in the case of, I don't know, brontosaurus stampede. In fact, I only discovered this under-used Google Chat entirely by having a friend try for two consecutive days to try to Chat with me, which made my computer burble for hours while I attempted to fix the problem by doing something nonsensical such as "upgrading to Leopard."
In addition to all this, I believe I have the ability to write messages on people's Facebook walls, but that seems confusing and potentially messy. I can text people from my e-mail account, which comes in very handy during the 20 seconds each day I don't have my phone with me. However, I have drawn the line at MySpace, because MySpace pages look like places where amateur animated graphics go to die, after they engage in a final, dramatic frenzy of absolutely unprocessable activity. If there's anyone under the age of 16 out there reading this, can you please tell me how it is you people make sense of anything on MySpace, because it basically seems like a sea of strangers yelling at me in giant purple type.
This sort of online chaos is not new, of course, and far more talented minds than mine have gone on about the various ills of super-connectivity, such as increased tension, decreased attention span and the likely onset of constant stress headaches. I just feel like I should write about it, because it's all I do. Something in recent weeks has pushed me over the edge from regular, garden variety reachability to comical, Professor X-like super-reachabilty, which has largely reduced my days to a schizophrenic and nonsensical dance wherein I don't work so much as click whichever box on my computer screen is blinking at the time.
So I have decided to trade in the world of professional writing and become merely a professional communicator. I could sit in here and be paid to answer my e-mail, attend to my Facebook, and occasionally drink vatfuls of coffee, which would shatter the last remaining shreds of my attention span and turn me into a jabbering automaton who's unable to carry on a conversation for more than 20 seconds with erp hang on be right back someone's texting me.
Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer who brings the buttered rolls to the Thanksgiving dinner. He can be reached at www.jeffvrabel.com.

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